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Thursday, 10 November 2011

chinese sticky beef

This week I've been busily (and frustratingly) carrying on with my uni work. This week is reading week, so I'm hoping to get a decent amount of work done. I'm also hoping that I can get some nice food made. My neighbour brought around a carrier bag full of pears and I'm deliberating on what to do with them. Pear Tatin? Pear butter? Pear sponge? Whatever I do, I'm determined to stay away from poaching them. That just doesn't do it for me.

Anyway, on to today's post...

When it comes to cooking Chinese inspired dishes, it's very rare that I'll step away from stir-fries. And I'm not even too keen on them. So, when I came across this sticky five spice beef with fried ginger it looked the ideal Chinese dish to cook, especially at this time of year.

The biggest change I've made to the original recipe is not bother blending any of the ingredients. With the slow-cooking, the onions and garlic will break up easily enough anyway, especially if you slice them really thinly. I've also omitted the fried ginger.

Serves 2-3

400g shin of beef

2 tbsp vegetable oil

2 onions, sliced

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 tbsp Muscovado sugar

1 tbsp dark soy sauce

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1 tbsp tomato puree

1 star anise

2 tsp Chinese five spice

1 tsp black peppercorns

1 tsp ground ginger

250ml beef stock

Preheat oven Gas 4 (180°C/350°F)

Heat the oil in an ovenproof pan and brown the meat on all sides for around 5 minutes. Take the beef out and fry the onions and garlic for 5 minutes. Then, return the meat along with the rest of the ingredients.

Bring to a boil, then cover with a lid and place in the oven for 3 1/2 hours. It'll be done when you can easily break up the meat with a fork.

This was delicious! Made it tonight. Even my picky one year old liked it :) I made it in my slow cooker rather than the oven. Just reduced the stock to about half. Couldn't get beef shin so used diced beef casserole. Came out great, the flavours were wonderful. Will definitely make again. Thanks!